You would be surprised (or maybe not) to see the emails I get from people in the radio industry confirming management tactics that defy the imagination.
At the same time, on occasion, a broadcaster or two connects with their local market to distinguish themselves in an era of poor management.
It’s all available to us for learning purposes.
Take what a Cumulus employee said about a new company policy that tightens the noose around the necks of local salespeople.
Cumulus Rate Alert System
Last week Cumulus implemented a new rate integrity system from its bunker in Atlanta.
Keep in mind that Cumulus has the philosophy that all local sales should be driven by national "brains". Cumulus uses Skype cameras at sales meetings and account execs are required to follow the book exactly as the mothership writes it.
Now, apparently, Cumulus has established “floor rates” set for all markets and when an order goes into the main system back in Atlanta with rates that are below the “floor” level, it sets off a literal "Big Brother" email alert to none other than the Dickey Brothers, Jonathan Pinch and Gary Pizzati.
One reader said:
“According to my sources, 2000 alert emails were generated the first day alone!
Keep in mind that none of the Dickey Brothers have had to rely on local selling to make their living. They were, after all, born into the right family.
In a month that saw Citadel cut sales commissions by 50% at one of their clusters, do strategies that seem to demoralize account executives accomplish their mission?
Hot or not?
Larry Wilson’s Local Initiative
His Alpha Broadcasting Portland stations did a “Paint the Town Clean” promotion recently that would warm the hearts of radio enthusiasts who think radio needs to get down and local real quick.
Personalities and staffers worked with the city to paint over graffiti. That public service initiative isn’t new to radio, but it is sure new to radio in the middle of consolidation. The stations teamed with a paint company (I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was a sponsor) and they got listeners involved.
Now I know this promotion didn’t come from central command and you can’t make listeners think that they might win something that is simultaneously being offered to many other stations, but is this promotion in this day and age hot?
Guess the Missing HD Radio Station
Okay, it wasn’t a promotion in Hartford but it really happened.
Here’s a reader account:
“It's not just CC that is downgrading engineering.
"I bought a new HD clock radio for my wife because the CBS 50K AM in Hartford doesn't come in well where I am due to poor ground conductivity and interference. They stream the AM signal on their FM HD2. Last week, my wife said the radio didn't go on. I checked it and no audio. I checked everything, then tuned up to HD3 and it worked fine. HD1 also worked fine. Then I realized that there was simply no audio on HD2.
"Yesterday, about a week later, I checked again and still no audio. I called the station, was connected with someone in engineering, who first said he wasn't the engineer for that station, but asked why I was calling. I told him, and he walked over and checked, and said "Oh Yeah, there isn't any audio". Last night when I checked, the signal was back on HD2”.
It’s one thing if listeners don’t notice HD radio. They never really took to it anyway but it’s amazing -- no feed for a week and no one at the station noticed.
People Meter Panic
Have you seen that Cumulus is now imitating another “C” broadcaster – this time, not Citadel or Clear Channel, but CBS.
CBS was first to build People Meter hit radio stations that attract huge cume in Los Angeles, New York and Detroit. Keep in mind People Meter numbers do not necessarily reflect listening but it’s the only ratings game radio broadcasters have these days.
While Myrtle Beach is not exactly New York in size, Cumulus is using its new format “I” (The "I' must stand for Imitation of CBS). The "I" format is also on Cumulus stations in Dallas, Nashville, Indianapolis and Pensacola. You get the idea. The recent format changes are on Cumulus stations that are not performing well so imitating CBS means nothing to lose.
Hit music.
Few if any jocks.
Even “Commercial Free Mondays” like CBS used to do it and “10 Songs in a Row Every Hour”.
Radio operators are figuring out how to place nice with the People Meter. CBS got out in front. But "I" radio is a direct ripoff.
Not hot and not even cool.
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In most major league sports, team owners have to work under the constraints of some kind of salary cap.
The term, I believe, is “capology”.
The motives on the part of the team owners are to keep salaries down and in essence prevent future George Steinbrenners from buying a championship while smaller market teams could not compete.
Of course the players reluctantly agreed to salary caps during labor negotiations but some agents have found ways to work around it.
What a perfect idea for the consolidated radio industry – I’m talking about you Clear Channel and Cumulus and Citadel.
In the case of these owners, there is no cap – just an ever shrinking budget which forces their minions to fire key talent and remove assets that wind up actually hurting their stations.
So how about a salary cap for radio – in particular these three companies – one of whom voluntarily filed for bankruptcy, another facing $18 billion in debt it can’t repay in two years and the third singing “It’s a Beautiful Day In the Neighborhood” while its debt piles up.
Are you with me?
Open minded?
Here is salary cap radio. I'm counting on you to weigh in a Facebook discussion to hone this thing. Dickey, Suleman and Hogan are listening.
1. Each market gets an annual budget for its local properties and like sports teams that get their cap limit from the league, the markets get it from their home office. Let's say, $30 million for a cluster of stations in Anytown, USA.
2. The market manager (if he or she hasn’t already been eliminated at which point corporate divvy's up the money) sees to it that the manager running each station gets to spend the allotted budget.
3. There has to be a manager for each station. Sorry, if you won’t do this, I’ll take my marbles and quit. Come on! You have to have a local manager. Just deal with it.
4. The manager gets to decide on how he or she wants to spend the money. That means if she wants to hire a morning team, she can do it. If she needs to run cheap on all-nights, then that is her decision. She has to work within the salary cap. (By the way, her salary is not in the salary cap – just as it is not in the salary cap of sports teams). Do you think Farid likes this yet?
5. Say a station manager wants to hire Dave & Geri for five years (as they should have done in Grand Rapids where they remain very popular), the structure of the contract can allow for the station to take a bigger cap “hit” in the early years of the contract and less in the later years. That’s why you need an on-the-scene manager – to know whether the station will be successful enough to grow the salary cap in ensuing years. In the case of Dave & Geri, local management let them get away and now their audience is following them on their podcast. Can any station afford that kind of listener defection?
6. You need a minor league just as sports teams have. Sometimes you are paying so much for key talent that you have to bring up a minor leaguer who has great potential for a look-see. Maybe you keep them for a while or send them back to another station. When I was a PD in Philly, I always had minor league stations from which to siphon talent – in upstate Pennsylvania. And they often became future big market stars at low prices (at first).
7. Sorry, your sales professionals and other employees including clerical (if any) must also be considered in your capology strategy. Don't forget sales, marketing and promotion. And, engineering when you divide the money up.
8. The difference between this and traditional budgeting is that budgeting involves cutting back whereas capology requires a deft hand at weighing which talents should get the most money to bring the best results.
9. Mobile, online and social networking must also be a cap expense. Some managers really do get the importance of online revenue growth and they are best suited to determine how fast and how much should be spent on new media. By keeping the decisions local, the money can be invested more wisely. If I’m running a local station, I’m looking to spend at least 25% of my budget on the future – or as I also call it – new media. The first year I may not have my morning talent signed to a ten-year contract yet but I can get those expenses under control.
If stations do well with their ratings and ad sales, then they get rewarded with a higher cap next year – the better to invest and shore up the local franchise.
Alright, maybe I’m no John Hogan but will you at least give this salary cap idea a try?
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(Since I wrote this post I receieved some factual corrections, observations and clarifications from Denny - I've added these in an addendum to the blog - please make sure to read this at the end of the post)
Denny Zeitlin is the exception that proves the rule - the rule in this case being that contemporary jazz is such a complex and demanding art form that to be a true master of it demands that one devotes one's entire attention to it, and spends one's whole life in its singular pursuit. This ‘rule’ is something that I actually believe to be true – while there have been many fine part-time jazz musicians, there’s never really been many (if any?) who only devoted some of their time to it yet played it at truly the very highest level. In fact I would go as far as to say that it’s not possible to really play it at the very highest level while devoting half of your time to doing something completely different.
Or perhaps it's more accurate to state that I would say that if I didn’t know about Denny Zeitlin...........
Zeitlin is, and has been for over 40 years, a full time psychiatrist and a part-time jazz musician – or at least part-time in that he has always fulfilled a fulltime role as a medical man while presumably (though I don’t know this for sure), playing jazz only when he has time away from his medical practice. And what is extraordinary about him is not that you could say he’s an amazing jazz pianist considering he doesn’t devote himself full time to it – what’s extraordinary is that he is a truly great jazz pianist by any standard. He is truly world class, and always has been ever since the time he came to New York as a medical student in the early 1960s, playing gigs and making recordings while studying medicine .
His brilliance and originality is immediately evident on the first recordings he appeared on, and no less than Bill Evans recorded his beautiful composition ‘Quiet Now’ which became a staple of Evans’ repertoire at that time. He released several albums during the 60s and then seemed to disappear from performance, emerging again in the early 80s with a beautiful duo recording for ECM with Charlie Haden ('Time Remembers One Time Once'), and even locking horns with Herbie Hancock on Straight No Chaser from a live recording, ('Jazz at the Opera House'), that I don’t think has ever been released on CD, but is one on which Zeitlin demonstrates again his right to be considered as one of the truly great jazz pianists.
Yet he remains under-appreciated and under-recognised, despite the fact that he remains active as a pianist and is playing as well as ever both solo, and in his trio with Buster Williams and Matt Wilson. I was recently talking to some musician friends of mine, and I brought Zeitlin’s name up, and while some of them had heard his name, few were aware of his work, and none were aware of the great trio recordings he made in the early 60s. I think it’s a travesty that these recordings are not better known – hence this blog post.
In 1964, while only 25 years old, he made what is for me an incredibly forward looking and prophetic piano trio album – Cathexis – with Cecil McBee and Freddie Waits. This recording is full of compositional, pianistic and ensemble concepts that were very uncommon at the time, but that later went on to become part and parcel of the contemporary jazz pianist's (and musician’s) vocabulary. It was very far ahead of its time in so many ways.
At a festival we were both playing at in Belgium last year I had the good fortune to have a conversation with Cecil McBee, the bassist on Cathexis, during which I brought up this recording (Cathexis) and asked Cecil about it. He said a very interesting thing – he told me that it was the first recording he (and Freddie Waits), made in New York when he arrived there, but that in hindsight he felt that he wasn’t really ready to make that recording. When I asked him what he meant by that, he said that though his reading skills and technique were in good condition due to his just having left music college, and he was able to negotiate the many technical difficulties of the music, at the same time he said that the conceptual material was so varied and demanding, he felt that he didn’t have the experience at that time to deal with the music in the way he now wished he could have.
Listening to Cathexis even now, there are so many challenges for the rhythm section, and so many varieties of feel and approach demanded of them. Waits and McBee do a fantastic job on the music, especially given the difficulties involved - I wonder if they did any gigs in preparation for the recording...... Even today this music would be challenging, I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be faced with those pieces at that time – it remains incredible to me that this recording was conceived and recorded in early 1964, and by someone who wasn't devoting all of his time to music!
For example – here are a few audio clips which give an idea of the sheer breadth of conception and ease of execution of this music and this CD (Thanks to Mr. Zeitlin for permission to use these clips - depending on your internet connection some clips may load slowly, if so, please be patient)
‘I-Thou’ is an exquisite melody, which has a wonderful circular feel with a deceptively tricky form – melody is one of Zeitlin’s great gifts
'Stonehenge' on the other hand, is a fast modal piece that has a hair-raising (for the rhythm section) rhythmic and densely chorded section that's used to launch the solos. Even in today's jazz world, where we're used to rhythmically difficult passages in the music, this would be considered challenging.
The use of 20th century harmony (as in the chromatic harmony of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, featuring stacked triads etc.) to re-harmonise standards became very popular in jazz the mid-to late 70s, particularly through the work of Richie Beirach and Dave Liebman. But Zeitlin was doing this many years before, such as in this take on Gershwin's classic 'Soon'
Or how about this chromatic take on the even more classic 'Round Midnight............
'Nica's Tempo' on the other hand features many tempo changes - a very unusual thing in a piano trio recording in 1964, though Mingus had been using it as a compositional device for a while
'Little Children, Don't Go Near That House' (the title is worth the price of admission alone!) is a very unusual melody showing a real original mind at work - the harmony is dense, the melody is lyrical and a little poignant, yet stylistically unclassifiable.........
'Cathexis' itself is a burn-out, with lots of chords including the fast moving Trane type progression heard here that shows that Zeitlin, along with pretty much everyone else at that time, was affected by Coltrane's contemporary harmonic explorations
And finally - an extended form composition - in this case an exploration of the minor blues. 'Blue Phoenix' works its way through three different sections, starting off very slowly with solo piano before getting into an extraordinary evocation of a walking bass line with the left hand of the piano. Zeitlin has always been brilliant at this (check out his 'Billie's Bounce' from 'Time Remembers One Time Once' on ECM for another amazing example). As a bassist I've rarely heard pianists successfully imitate the feel of a walking bass line - it's usually too angular and percussive. But Zeitlin seems to have figured out how to get that legato driving thing that bassists often do - as in this example:
He finishes 'Blue Phoenix' as a fast burning minor blues, utilising the following accelerando (another rare thing in jazz) to get to the desired tempo
He moved to the West Coast in the mid-60's and in between his medical work put together a new trio with Jerry Granelli and Charlie Haden which made several recordings - 'Carnival', 'Live at the Trident' and (with Joe Halpin on bass and Oliver Johnson on drums on half of it) 'Zeitgeist'. Carnival and Zeitgeist were recently released on a Mosaic box set that also includes 'Cathexis', though the Trident recording wasn't included in this collection for some reason.
While Haden and Granelli recorded more extensively with Zeitlin and form an obvious trio rapport with him, I've always been very fond of the pieces on Zeitgeist that have the Joe Halpin/Oliver Johnson bass and drum team. They have a muscularity of approach that really fires the music and puts it into other areas. This is particularly true on 'Dormammu' where Zeitlin shows the breadth of his creative abilities yet again. Here he ventures into some ferocious open improvisation with Halpin and Johnson that shows he was au fait with the 60s free scene
I also really like Johnson's time feel too - he has a wonderfully springy cymbal feel with an edge to it - slightly pushy but not rushing, reminiscent of Jack DeJohnette's time feel. 'Night and Day' is a good example
And finally, have a listen to the playfulness of the way they play the hoary old classic 'I Got Rhythm' - dense voicings yet underpinned with real swing
These albums contain an extraordinary amount of improvisational and compositional approaches - extended form, lyrical ballads, complex rhythms, sophisticated chromatic reharmonization of standards, free playing, fantastic swing. They are major statements in the art of the possible for piano trio, and given the time they were made, were very prophetic. The dominant piano trio influence in mainstream jazz in the 60s was Bill Evans, yet to my mind, these trio recordings show a greater variety of approach within what is largely a conventional jazz context, than does the various Evans trios. This is not to denigrate the Evans trios, but rather is meant to point up the extraordinary achievements of the Zeitlin trios.
Achievements that have not been given their due recognition. Which brings us back to the opening point - can you really reach the highest level you can reach if you don't devote yourself full time to the music? I think its clear that Zeitlin has reached and surpassed the level that most full time pianists can reach. But could the achievements have been even greater had he devoted himself fulltime to music? He certainly would have been given greater recognition - as Monk famously said, even if you don't have a gig you should always be on the scene. Out of sight, out of mind is a truism - there's no doubt that Zeitlin's absence from the scene - especially in NY - has contributed to the lack of awareness of his work, especially today.
However he has an interesting take on all of this, in which he posits the idea that his medical and musical work feed off each other. So - do check out these great trio albums, check out what he's doing currently, and let's leave the last words to him
Addendum
After I wrote this blog I received a message from Denny pointing out a couple of factual errors and giving some insight into some of the points I raised.
With regard to the errors - ‘Billie’s Bounce’ was actually recorded on a Palo Alto recording called Tidal Wave. And the audio clip version of ‘I Got Rhythm’ that I posted featured the bass and drum team of Charlie Haden and Jerry Granelli – there’s a different version featuring Joe Halpin and Oliver Johnson on the bonus tracks of the Mosaic Box Set I mentioned in the post.
Here are Denny’s observations and clarifications:
It is accurate that over the years I have maintained a primary responsibility to patient care and psychiatric education, and have woven music into this fabric as best as I have been able.
Re my "disappearance" : After the Columbia series of 5 LPs in the sixties, I became very interested in the integration of acoustic and electronic instruments, jazz, classical, rock, funk, and free music. I withdrew from public performance for several years while I got the instrumentation, technology, and group together, and then performed this music through the seventies. This journey was recorded on the small independent label, 1750 Arch, and culminated in my acoustic-symphonic-electronic score for the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." That score was recently released on CD. I then returned to a focus on acoustic music, and the duet album for ECM with Charlie soon followed, reaching a larger audience.
Re Cathexis: I had one night of rehearsal with Cecil before our first recording session, and met Freddie for the first time in the studio. We never gigged as a trio. I agree that they did an absolutely superb job on the date. It was very interesting to learn of Cecil's conversation with you.
RE Blue Phoenix: You might want to mention also that my new solo CD, "Precipice," has several examples of walking bass lines at different tempos.
RE the Mosaic Box Set: The reason Live At The Trident was not included in this set is that the set focuses exclusively on the studio dates. Mosaic plans to release LATT on CD, probably within the next 12 months.
(Your description of the Johnson/Halpin team and Oliver's contribution is right on, and tallies with my experience of them.)
RE: I Got Rhythm: The version you audio-clipped and described is actually one of the Haden/Granelli
Bonus tracks. The version with Johnson/Halpin is the very brief, more avant-garde reconstructed/deconstructed track 6 of Disc #3.
Many, many thanks for your support of my music, Ronan, and I hope our paths will cross in person before too long.
When I took over as program director at a major market top 40 station, the first record promotion man to visit me walked in, sat down (with the door open) and pulled out a checkbook.
He said, “how much do you want?”
It’s not like I was naive about payola, but his frankness was still disconcerting.
Maybe because I am an east coast guy I am not that always so trusting.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked (maybe even loved) those Runyonesque characters who pushed program directors to play music they were paid to work.
However, I didn’t always believe them.
When they sat in my office and pulled out Billboard to show me the “bullet” the record they were working "earned" this week, I would take the magazine and page through to see if their label bought any full page ads. Maybe the label bought the "bullet", I thought.
I told you I was not that trusting.
However, I, like a lot of program directors, lived and died by local research that our stations conducted.
Still, creative record promoters would bring free albums, gifts or God knows what to the various record stores in the listening area so that these stores would report hyped sales that exaggerated the record's real sales performance when the station called.
Listener input was important but I caught the labels paying people to call in and request their songs over and over again. All's fair in love and the record business.
It was all part of the game.
I liked Radio & Records because I could track what other stations like mine were adding and how songs were moving up and down the charts. But at no time did I ever believe music charts like the ones in Billboard really mattered to anyone other than the labels and the artists.
Still true today.
Which is why I was so pleased to see my friend Eric Garland of Big Champagne debut The Ultimate Chart based on online streams and social networking services – not just sales and airplay.
Now this chart has the potential to mean something to everyone – after all what is a music chart in this day and age that doesn’t adequately factor in online and social networking? That’s right, Billboard.
Here’s how The Ultimate Chart does it.
They measure legitimate music services such as YouTube, MySpace, Twitter and Facebook. The strategy is sound because there are so many more things that are relevant to what makes music successful than primarily record sales and airplay. There is also television, ring tones and other ways to judge success.
If you study The Ultimate Chart you will see discrepancies between the results they report and Billboard – as it should be.
In a recent New York Times article on The Ultimate Chart, the writer said,
“For the week that ended July 11, Billboard’s Hot 100 had Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” at No. 1 and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” at No. 2. The Ultimate Chart, measuring the week to July 13, had those songs in reverse order. But No. 3 on the Ultimate Chart — Shakira’s World Cup song, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” — is a distant No. 39 on Billboard; the Ultimate’s No. 4, Eminem’s “Not Afraid,” is No. 11.
The most notable disparity is Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” which is No. 5 on the Ultimate Chart; on the Hot 100, the song peaked at No. 5 in February, but fell off the chart entirely in June.
That would seem to indicate the continued popularity of the song — or at least of Mr. Bieber — on social-media networks even if downloads and radio play have cooled. For artists and record companies, that extra attention can mean the difference between a blip and a long-lasting hit”.
Being number one can also be a disadvantage – I’m speaking of Billboard now.
While they play with their methodology, Billboard has not seen fit to embrace the Ultimate Chart’s approach. Billboard several years ago relented a bit when it started factoring in AOL and Yahoo in their chart compilation but have been slow to reflect the radical swing to online and social networking influences.
The labels show a willingness to look at all type of data that on the surface would indicate that they, indeed, have open minds.
In reality, record labels only use the data that helps them sell an artist or product. So if it were delivered to them by Charles Manson and it showed upward growth of their artist(s) then the chart is good.
I’m kidding – I'm kidding.
What this Billboard challenge tells us is what we’ve been saying all along – that the music industry has changed even if the labels have not.
Consumers can like an artist, cherry pick a tune, go to a concert (or not as the concert industry is beginning to find out), buy merchandise and more without having to have a top ten song.
In the music industry, a song that has earned its “bullet” in Billboard shows the most growth.
Example: debuting on the charts at #39 with a "bullet" is euphoria.
Number one with a "bullet" means the song is so big it is not yet out of juice – something we see a lot less of these days.
With that in mind, Eric Garland’s Big Champagne if it successfully turns the focus on how real people consume music and not how the record industry wishes they did, then I would say it earned a number one with a "bullet" for The Ultimate Chart.
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The radio consultant Alan Burns came out with a study recently that concluded “radio is in danger of losing its future adult audience”.
Note Burns said “future adult audience” not young audience which radio has arguably already lost.
This notion is not new to those of you who meet here at this space every day. We’ve been warning of these dire consequences for years as radio companies ignored their product for foolish cutbacks.
They fail to fully understand the new listener – their technology and sociology.
In the Burns study, almost half of all women and nearly three-quarters of early adopters would buy a different cell phone if it contained a radio receiver.
I’m not buying it.
Radio is not a main attraction on a cell phone which is why Steve Jobs has been stingy with putting the FM chip in his devices.
For some reason we in radio have a hard time seeing that consumers have changed. We are still trying to offer them what we’re comfortable offering them – 24/7 broadcast radio.
I agree with Burns when he says, “the more like a jukebox we become, the more we’ll lose audience to digital alternatives”.
Absolutely.
Yet those of us who believe this are already speaking to the converted. Even as we speak, more morning talent is being cut loose to make way for voice tracking.
My friend Bill Gardner, the outstanding morning talent is leaving JILL-FM in Los Angeles because of -- I'm sad to say, automation. What is it about voice tracking that owners do not get? Listeners don't like it but owners love the money it saves.
So here’s the real story:
1. Personalities like the ones being fired by radio stations are the antidote to iTunes. Especially if these personalities are music trendsetters. The very thing that differentiates an iPod from a radio is the thing radio executives apparently do not value enough to keep them employed – on-air, live and local personalities.
2. Radio as it is now configured is not a major influence on musical tastes as it once was when it had no digital competition and before filesharing. Come on – playing the same tunes over and over again ad nauseum does not directly address the more potent competition – music discovery by peer group and online websites. Pandora and peer-to-peer filesharing is today’s music discovery not top 40 radio.
3. On-demand listeners will continually opt for short form “radio” whatever that turns out to be. In other words, entertainment that has a beginning, middle and end and that can be carried around on mobile devices or eventually available from the cloud anywhere. It can be consumed on-demand. This is anti-radio 101. Keep fighting this and in a few years some consultant will tell you what we just said right here.
4. Local is what is missing from radio. An iPod is impersonal. When iTunes updates its music offerings, it’s the big Apple out there for everyone to see and hear. Radio works best when a local personality debuts the local playlist assuming it has new music on it. We don’t need more national. iTunes is good for what it is, radio doesn’t need to aspire to a poor imitation.
5. The iPad is the new radio, the new television, the new magazine or newspaper, the new book and maybe even the new computer for some folks. If you believe me, then everything we do should be built around the iPad – not old technology. That means radio will have to have video available alongside. Personalities who are live and visible. Just jiggering new playlists or bending old formatic beliefs as a concession to a new age will be met with failure.
6. In the past if you wanted to change format, you’d hire a consultant or PD to do it. They would build a local station and if it was good and if it fit a need, the station would succeed (and if you could hear it). Today, if a radio company really wants to rebuild for the future, all it has to do is start with the concept of social networking. That is, build the new “radio station” (which will soon be misnomer in the digital world) around this group of like-thinking people. Then you service them, talk to them, put them in touch with each other in a way they could not achieve elsewhere. Oh, and do it all for an iPad. Three million sold in less than three months and Christmas is coming.
My advice would be to stop thinking of radio in a traditional way.
Think of radio as the perfect and I mean perfect liaison to new media. We know how to do content professionally, we can do video. Although we don’t impress in social media, we’re capable of learning.
If you wanted to create a scenario for the potential of new media, broadcast radio has all the tools (especially if you rehire the squandered local talent) to come up with whatever the marketplace wants.
That’s the can-do attitude radio should have.
Not clinging to the past and not trying to slightly modify the past for the present.
Listeners are way ahead of radio.
Go follow them because radio has the ability to give today's more demanding listeners exactly what they want even if it is in a different form or in a different space.
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Recently there has been speculation that Clear Channel is petitioning the FCC to allow letting groups own 10-12 stations per market and other remedies designed to further deregulate radio.
Clear Channel is owned by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital – two investment banks.
They overpaid for Clear Channel at $24 billion. Later tried to get out of doing the deal and then, faced with the legal consequences, decided to go through with the purchase of radio’s largest consolidator.
Investment banks do not really own anything just to operate them.
They buy companies.
Leverage the debt.
Then turn around and sell what they bought for a profit.
When they can’t sell for a profit, these investment banks usually make fees – lots of them – so the process of selling off the individual parts can also be profitable. That is, they win even when they lose.
I believe Lee and Bain’s Clear Channel is no more ready to sell the company than, say, than Lew Dickey’s Cumulus Broadcasting is ready to start acquiring stations.
The tricky Lew Dickey knows that he will never get what he paid for his stations or his company. The age of consolidation has passed and while owners were making money they were wasting their assets – the people, the talent, management, sales ability – that could have made their investments grow in value.
Is the push to get the feds to further relax ownership limits a precursor to selling companies like Clear Channel?
Clear Channel is not worth what it was when Randy Michaels first put the stations together.
And while the argument has been bandied about that more monopoly – not less as in the merger of Sirius and XM Radio -- could be justified because radio doesn’t compete against radio any longer. It competes against all media.
Yes, Lee and Bain will exit someday.
Not today.
And they will do it with or without further relaxation of ownership rules. In fact, don’t be surprised if some stations will be sold off for spectrum space as the new media needs of cell phones and mobile devices gobble up spectrum.
You’ll note that Clear Channel continues to donate crummy AM stations to minority interests.
What a joke.
Give away properties the minority owners cannot possibly run profitably and take a tax write-off in doing so. You notice Clear Channel is not exactly giving away KISS in Los Angeles for a tax write-off.
The speculators are missing a bigger point.
There is an exit strategy developing right now, but it is the one being considered by Clear Channel employees.
Take a look at this email I received chronicling what some Clear Channel people are getting ready to do:
“My friend, along with many other employees in this cluster (in the Southwest), are all creating exit plans. They have goals to be out of there in the next 8 months. The reason? Past experiences and observations.
Although this market is meeting and passing its goals, which is never enough, the fourth quarter cometh.
When I say the sales department has met or exceeded their goals, what was that great classic "Nothin From Nothin Leaves Nothin?", you can do the math. The market has been down as much as 18%. CC lowers the rate to create volume, market goes up, sales has to go in and sell value, buyers say value, what value? In a nutshell they have increased there (sic) sales to meet their goal of 3% increase over this time last year.
I firmly believe two things. 1. they want to expand the number of stations allowed because they cannot sell the excess without taking a hit and 2. you will see significant reductions in work force by the end to the year. It is the Clear Channel way.
Everyone is still in denial. Both owners (CC) and the employees. The smart ones are going to bail”.
So we know that investment banks eventually sell that which they bought and usually they make money one way or the other.
The real damage could come as Clear Channel and other major consolidators lose the people they need to avoid further and continued shrinkage of revenues.
You’ll note even the rose-colored glasses of analysts are foggy these days.
People have come to understand that an old media business that has done virtually nothing but cut costs for 12 years is depleted and worth less than when the properties were assembled.
It reminds me of management guru Peter Drucker who keynoted one of my industry management seminars before his death. He told the audience of radio managers that it is the seller who makes out like a bandit in most company sales not the buyer.
Drucker’s words ring true today as we see radio pillaged by incompetent managers who under fear of losing their jobs were required to slice and dice a perfectly good live, local cash flow machine.
In essence the consolidators have effectively devalued their very own assets.
The sly Lowry Mays knew all of this.
And you'll notice Lowry got out in time.
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Motivational author Bob Nelson says, “You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them, but by building a fire within”.
Unfortunately in radio these past few years, consolidators are screaming “We didn’t start the fire” louder than Billy Joel sang it.
A lot of what has passed as good management and smart strategic thinking has been ill-advised and mean-spirited.
So we find ourselves 12 years removed from the origins of radio consolidation and three years since draconian cutbacks have compromised most live and local broadcasting.
On that note, here are the latest new stupid (and smart) radio tricks being played in our industry.
Citadel Cuts Sales Commissions in a Recovery
Okay, maybe it’s not a big recovery but go figure what this strategic move does to morale and the bottom line.
Citadel stations in Birmingham, for example and in particular WJOX (said to be the only one making money), are reported to have cut commissions very recently by – well, you guess.
How about one-half!
Insiders say this came from the new GM who has been there only a few months.
Here’s an in-market account:
“I know it affected the top billing station, WJOX, it went to 9% direct from 12% and 7% on agency from 10%. WJOX is supporting the others in the cluster so I guess they need the money to make the month."
Who is supervising these geniuses?
You guessed it again, Judy Ellis, Citadel CEO Farid Suleman’s radio wife.
Cutting commissions to save money at the start of a recovery – as we used to say in Philly – stoopid!
WTOP Employs New Media to Cover a Rare DC Earthquake
This Bonneville top-five billing combo doesn’t own the all-news franchise in Washington by just cranking out headlines every 20 minutes.
When a rare earthquake – okay, only a 3.6 but the biggest ever measured in Washington – hit the nation’s capital recently the usual calls came in, but also tons of emails, texts, tweets and posts on their Facebook page. Immediately, WTOP got a snapshot of where the tremors were felt – a robust flow of information. A powerful demonstration of social media as a news gathering tool not just a chatterbox.
Smart, that Jim Farley.
Clear Channel Lobbying Hits Nearly $1 Million (Every Three Months)
How’s $940,000 – up from the last quarter of 2009 and up from $760,000 compared to the first three months of last year. Those folks at Lee and Bain sure know how to cut back, don’t they?
First they pay Randall Mays to go away as CFO and sign him to a lucrative part-time employment contract plus hire a new man meaning Randall really doesn't go away.
Then, they make Mark Mays go away at the end of this year by giving him a lucrative new contract to stay -- a contract that pays Mark Mays millions to do 20% of his current work.
And, he gets to buy the Gulfstream jet he now uses. First right of refusal if anyone outbids him. Plus, Lee and Bain will hire a new man (probably a man).
They keep trimming local radio staff.
Eliminating engineers.
Cutting costs.
Hey, you have to lobby, don’t you?
This is a model takeover company that should be studied by Harvard Business School, but I’m going to say – not so smart as a good radio operator.
Michigan Looks to Outlaw Broadcasting Non-Competes
House Bill 5750 sponsored by Representative Fred Miller.
The bill would prohibit an owner or operator of a broadcast television or radio station from requiring certain employees (primarily "on-air talent") from signing non-compete contracts or agreements.
House Bill 5750 would amend Section 4a of the act (MCL 445.774a) to create an exception for contracts or agreements between a broadcast industry employer and a broadcast employee or prospective employee. "Broadcast employee" would mean any employee of a broadcast industry employer except for those providing primarily sales or management functions.
California has led the way on this and there are other states that protect talent from greedy owners who think it is smart to limit the living professional broadcasters can make because they are no longer working for their former station.
Very smart.
Farid Suleman as Convention Co-Chair
Radio Ink turned to Farid “Fagreed” Suleman to be co-chair of their December convention in New York City saying the event “will benefit from his valuable insights into what top executives most need to know and understand in these complex times”.
Hello?
This guy ran Citadel into bankruptcy and walked away with a lucrative new employment contract.
If you want to know how to eradicate shareholder value, help the previous investors who hired you lose their stake in the company and screw hundreds of employees out of their jobs and get a promotion, you won’t want to miss it.
The Radio Ink event is usually smart.
Choosing a bankruptcy loser to show us the future – out of touch with the radio industry.
The CBS Media Player that Replays Commercials
Last week CBS Interactive Music Group and CBS Radio released a new streaming media player at Radio.com. It integrates 130 radio stations and Last.FM. A proud CBS news releases boasted better functionality and more ad placement opportunities, but the last line of the release is the real kicker:
“Users will also be able to scroll back to commercials they missed”.
Now that’s the real killer app! Replaying those cool commercials.
The CBS Interactive people are at least trying even though you get the sense that it’s still all about the terrestrial stations and not about separate new content.
Let’s hope some PR flak who doesn’t get it wrote that sentence and if so he or she gets a "stoopid" the way they say it at 3rd and Shunk in South Philadelphia. No one -- zero -- is going to replay a radio commercial.
If the radio industry is going to recapture its live and local radio magic, it needs more smart strategic management decisions.
Think of it like this.
iTunes revenue in the first quarter of the year was $1.1 billion.
Clear Channel’s was $623 million for the comparative period.
iTunes revenue is only 7.9% of Apple's total revenue while radio represents half of Clear Channel’s revenue.
iPad revenue is forecast by at least one analyst to be $1.95 billion in the third quarter of this year.
Live, local radio is still a good business but repeater radio is not.
Radio with new media content and social networking as a separate tandem is a growth business.
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I am often asked by readers to suggest some ways they might start thinking about entrepreneurial ideas for the new media content revolution ahead.
It’s one thing to learn from the mistakes of consolidators in the music and radio industries and their predecessors in publishing and TV but the best way to see actionable growth ideas for the future is to study sociology along with the emerging technology now.
Here are a few ideas I thought might interest you:
1. Textbooks Out, iPads and Kindles In
Gabe Hobbs’ Hobbs Blobs tells us that Clearwater High School in Florida is planning to eliminate all textbooks by the start of school this fall. That’s 2,100 students at an estimated expense of $600,000. It was all over the front page of the St. Petersburg Times touting the first-in-nation high school to go paperless.
Gabe wisely projects that radio might want to find a place on these new age textbooks because students will have 3G connectivity.
24/7 formats will probably not be the answer but if my former associate George Michael, the WFIL legendary teen personality, were alive, he might say – get into the high school news business. Maybe even the Clearwater High School news business.
For those of you fired from a perfectly good radio job by the stupidity of consolidated managers, they will never do this, but you might.
Hint?
2. Virgin to Publish In-Flight iPad Magazine
Richard Branson is a crazy man and that’s why we love him. Fly Virgin Atlantic and you’ll love him even more once his new “Maverick” iPad-only inflight magazine becomes available to passengers.
Virgin will save the trees and target their upscale international audience with content on entrepreneurism, technology and travel.
Branson’s daughter, Holly, will head the project that will likely reduce traditional publishing costs and start playing to what is likely to be planeloads of fliers with electronic devices on their laps.
First iPad-only issue comes out in October. Then iPhone and android device editions will follow.
Hearst sold 12,000 downloads of its Popular Mechanics app since it was released in early July. Wired has been ringing up monthly app business since it dumped paper. Esquire; Marie Claire; O, The Oprah Magazine; Food Network Magazine; Cosmopolitan and Harper's Bazaar are next.
This is what we’ve been talking about and for those of you who attended my Media Solutions Lab last January – the future we saw together then is arriving now which prompts the question – why aren’t you in the multimedia business?
And that’s what it really is or is destined to become – not simply print, or video or audio. It’s everything wrapped around social networking. The paid model is here as an addition to free. Ad supported Internet is alive and well but there are not enough ad dollars nor will there be to support a wide range of entrepreneurial ventures.
I’m going to do some special segments on the opportunities ahead in multimedia content creation at our next Media Solutions Lab January 27 (save the date). In the meantime, take a close look at your area(s) of expertise and start conceptualizing a new model built around – the iPad, America’s new entertainment and information device.
3. Paywalls Are Coming
News Corp’s Times and Sunday Times is getting ready to start charging for content. It has erected a paywall that even Google’s web crawlers cannot surmount
Revenue from online advertising is not enough.
Hulu launched a premium TV service for $9.99 a month for full seasons of TV shows and other content. That’s really aggressive and may not work. Who knows what the sweet spot is for monthly subscription pricing.
Even local newspapers like The Tallahassee Democrat, a Gannett paper no less, is charging for the online edition. The Wall Street Journal almost always has charged and The New York Times has a cockamamie metering concept that it will introduce in 2011 although I believe The Times model will fail because it tends to punish heavy readers.
This publication – Inside Music Media will go to a pay model by early fall -- $99 for a year, $14.99 per month.
Radio stations that could offer specialized short-form music programs, experts on music discovery by genre and news and entertainment could also find a lucrative pay model if the content has certain elements.
This is my criteria for success.
To succeed with a paywall the content must be unique, compelling and addictive.
If all three of these criteria are not met, chances for success diminish.
For example, if a radio station offered a website and music-enhanced discovery site around hit music, it would likely fail unless it has content not available elsewhere that consumers would be compelled to read so they could become addicted to the product.
Classical music buffs who are left with nothing on terrestrial radio could get several hours of music a day ported to their electronic device of choice with outstanding, exquisite content and expert context may very well pay. You might also monetize through ads.
Local will be a big area.
Will someone please do this before I do?
Zip code Newsradio.
Type in News-08003 and get all the news for Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Not fluff. No repackaged news from other sources or it will fail. Unique, compelling and addictive. Social networking for that zip, video, pictures, text.
If the content exists somewhere else for free, you’re through.
There are many new opportunities cropping up for new media. It is important to understand one thing more than anything else – the consumer.
Your target consumer will tell you what they want, will use and maybe even pay for.
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There are a lot of questionable moves being made out there in the media world these days.
Companies propped up by hubris and investment capital and overleveraged are doing some odd things.
And then there are seemingly free strategies that may cost their companies money in the future.
So here are a few that we can learn from:
XM as an Active Stock
Now that is the work of the greatest radio salesman of all time, Mel Karmazin.
Let me explain.
Wall Street is gushing all over Sirius XM because his previously conservative “guidance” to analysts has been exceeded for the third time this year. Either analysts are dumber than we think or they just play along.
So Sirius XM suddenly earns a “buy” rating as these lemmings are impressed with the conversion rate from those who had free trial satellite radio subscriptions to paid.
Or as the great salesman was quoted:
“That percentage rose from 44.3% to 46.7.%" making the just-ended second quarter "the best quarter of gross additions, deactivations and net additions since the merger of Sirius and XM in July 2008.”
Keep in mind that this is a company that was knocking on the door of bankruptcy not long ago.
And if that doesn’t put it in perspective for you with all this talk about Sirius XM on the “most active” list, the day it earned that status their stock went up just six cents to just one dollar. One buck. Yesterday Sirius XM closed at 97 cents.
Sirius XM is a virtual platform in the mind of its great sales CEO Mel Karmazin.
Grade: F for effort. A for Karmazin.
The NPR Rebrand As Everything But Radio
Only a newspaper executive like Vivian Schiller (NPR’s CEO) could waste the time and effort on distancing NPR from its real name National Public Radio.
What NPR was good at was accessing new media platforms and all that was done by radio people who preceded Schiller’s regime. No name change was warranted. Many called NPR "NPR" and some still called it National Public Radio. Whatever the expense – whatever the negative value of distancing radio from its radio roots, name a benefit that equals the risk?
Let’s call this dust up “Mourning Edition” and name it after Schiller’s bad strategic move.
Grade: F like in if you just put your name “radio” on the paper, you would have gotten an “A”.
Clear Channel Engineering Like The Culligan Man
Clear Channel is apparently tightening the screws on that non-essential art of engineering, you know, keeping the station on-the-air like it's supposed to be.
"Requests for non emergency repairs, new equipment, etc, will be sent from PDs, managers, etc., to corporate engineering on the official CC corporate engineering discrepancy form. Corporate engineering will determine the best course of action and will dispatch people and resources as needed."
It appears local market engineers no longer have control – that’s surprising, isn’t it? No one else at local radio stations these days seem to have control of anything in the era of bean counters.
In essence, as one of my readers pointed out, local engineers have become repair people. This also apparently eliminates the regional Directors of Engineering.
This wouldn’t be to save money, would it?
You can expect more engineering layoffs once this is in place and perhaps the model will eventually be one engineer bouncing around from market to market when there are emergencies.
Can you imagine what would happen if groups like Clear Channel would put their minds to innovating content the way they brainstorm for ways to cut operations to the bone even if it threatens the very signal on-the-air.
Grade: A for innovative way to save money and hurt yourself.
New Ways to Pay Morning Talent
Tom Taylor had a great piece recently about a Clear Channel experiment to come up with a new way to pay morning talent.
As I remember it, a so-called 30% test was being imposed in at least one market. That is, if the budget for the morning show is more than 30% of the revenue, there must be cuts made.
Tom reported that he has heard of some two-person morning shows getting cut down to one personality.
This idea of tying paychecks to revenue sounds like a Lee and Bain kind of thing – the mentality of an investment bank stuck with being an operator. And it’s oh so dangerous because half of anything is still half – isn’t it?
Here’s a better idea f0r Lee & Bain:
If your morning show brings in 40% of the station's revenue, sign those people to a long-term contract and keep your costs down just like sports teams do when they are operating under an expense cap. Spread the talent expense over a longer period of time while preserving that talent to attract audience.
If your morning show team brings in 50% or more of the stations revenues, get with them and their entourage and find out how to grow the shows popularity and invest more money (sorry, I know that hurt).
Under 40% revenue coming from the morning show, let the local manager have one year to fix it without interference from corporate. If they fail and you haven’t butted in, you can fire them. Most good managers would readily accept this responsibility (but remember I said "haven't butted in").
Under 25% revenue coming from the morning show means you’re carrying Don Imus or some other free import. Stop it right now and do something local.
Grade: Clear Channel’s idea “F”. My idea “A”.
One final thought.
It has been my experience that hands-on operators when allowed to work in an atmosphere of approval and acceptance can come up with more marketable innovative ideas than a handful of CEOs or bankers.
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Or he is a more savvy businessman than his ridiculous public comments give him credit for.
Prince recently told the Daily Mirror over in the UK that “The Internet’s completely over”.
Thank God he finally shared that with us. I was under the false impression that Apple was selling mobile devices as fast as they could make them partially to access the Internet on the go.
Now I’m going to have to make my iPhone and iPad into ash trays – and I don’t even smoke!
Of course, Prince is no different than most of the music executives he loathes. He may say the Internet is over but the four major label execs wish it were over. That’s close enough.
Let’s get back to the days of CDs.
Hey, vinyl is coming back.
In the embarrassing example of a great artist who should keep his mouth shut except when he sings, Prince is going to stop downloads entirely for his next album and plans to put his money where the fish go, in a newspaper, by reverting back to the tactic of stuffing a CD in copies of the Daily Mirror.
Seems like Prince is irked because the starving artist can’t get an advance from his starving record label so he’ll just give away the CDs.
Prince is one sly fox.
Have you been following the demise of the concert touring business – what I tipped you about a long time ago? The last bastion of a healthy music industry is headed for life support.
No wonder Prince comes up with stuff like:
"The Internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."
That’s right, Prince. The Internet is like MTV.
See, Prince’s end game is to continue to make money touring and he has to know that those days are numbered. So, just like a Wal-Mart 15-minute special, Prince is giving away his music to get fans into buying concert tickets.
That train has left the station and is headed to the junkyard.
This summer has seen so many canceled concerts and trouble brewing for concert promoter Live Nation.
Prince demands fans remove photos of him from their personal sites and has threatened to sue YouTube and eBay.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t like the way Lady Gaga dresses for a Yankees game. She sure has street smarts and cred.
Gaga embraces the power of free as a promotional tool with free downloads and look-sees on video sites.
Prince embraces the questionable power of tabloid newspapers to give away his music recorded on yesterday’s technology.
Gaga encourages sharing while she then goes on to sell more entire albums and downloads than anyone else.
Prince spits in the face of YouTube and free-access sites.
My friend, the outstanding music industry analyst Steve Meyer, linked to a story where Prince’s contemporaries beg to differ with him.
Meyer said in a recent piece:
"Back in July 2007 Prince distributed his Planet Earth CD in the Sunday edition of London' Daily mail newspaper. Back then I wrote about here in the newsletter and said, "Sunday circulation of the Mail is estimated to be between 2 to 3 million. That means that's how many copies of Prince's new album will be distributed in one day. In essence, Prince sells a couple of million albums in one day. Not a bad day for the "Purple One" at all. The financial information about how much the Mail paid Prince for this deal was not disclosed, but I would imagine Prince got a nice big fat check”.
Ever get the feeling you’re being had?
Prince, who notoriously has been at odds with his labels (think “the artist formerly known as") is at it again.
Prince sells to the newspaper to distribute his CDs and they pay him to give away his CD as a loss leader. Then uses the wide exposure to promote his concerts.
The Internet is not over.
And Prince is not over.
What is over is the CD business and soon, the concert industry at the hands of folks like Live Nation.
It’s great to make fun of Prince when he says stupid things that we know are not true, but at the heart of it all is a hurting music industry that has been left to shrivel up by the big four labels.
The labels don’t get that free is their friend.
They don’t get that taxing radio will hurt them further.
That they are leaving money on the table by predator pricing of royalties for streaming services that could be generating more free interest that turns to sales.
That the concert business they promote but from which they do not benefit is not enough to keep big artists with them in the future.
That 360 deals are really 180 deals because music is now a commodity. Artists will not be able to look forward to careers with recording as their main effort and record labels are the least likely to have the skills to manage a singer or a band’s career.
Oh, and MTV isn’t dead.
It changed.
And that’s what the music industry must now do or face further erosion.
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Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius XM Radio, convinced the government to allow him to merge Sirius with XM – the only two competing satellite services – thus making them one monopoly.
The Mel argument was that satellite radio wasn’t just competing with satellite radio but with every form of media entertainment out there.
He won.
Now Clear Channel is back at the FCC again after four years and proposing ownership “tiers” exactly to their monopolistic liking.
Increase the number of stations a company can own from eight to 10 in a market that has between 55-64 total radio stations (hey, I thought you said radio competes with all media and not other stations).
In markets where there are 65 or more stations, Clear Channel would respectfully like to own between eight and 12 stations. It argues that this type of move could “jumpstart” the terrestrial radio industry (wait a minute – you mean jumpstart Clear Channel, don’t you?).
And then they have the nerve to argue that “Easing the local radio ownership limits, at least in the largest markets, will recapture investors’ interest in radio broadcast companies. It will also stimulate the long-dormant market for radio station transactions.”
I have not heard anything about the listener – the consumer or the advertiser. Just consolidators.
Talk about a sense of entitlement. You don’t have to blame young people, just greedy old people who run consolidated radio companies.
But sit down for this argument:
“Broadcast radio remains one of the least consolidated of the country’s major industries.”
How comforting.
Is that why radio consolidation has been such a colossal failure?
Clear Channel took 102 pages to tell the FCC “None of these powerful competitors are limited in the number of outlets or program streams they can provide”.
And they are looking to hit it out of the park.
Abolish the limit on the number of AM or FM stations a consolidator (predominantly Clear Channel) can own.
Make it possible for grandfathered clusters to be sold as one transaction.
Don’t worry, The Evil Empire is very concerned about minorities (which is why I guess they hire so few of them as managers). Waivers for anybody who helps stimulate the number of minority and female-owned stations.
I can just see this image of Clear Channel execs with they fingers crossed, hands behind their backs hoping nobody at the FCC compares the number of stations they used as incubators for minority ownership when compared to the 99% better ones they kept for themselves.
Clear Channel seems to think that there is an atmosphere for deregulation in Washington which is the most amazing thought I have heard in an Obama Administration. But, hey, whatever helps you become bigger and badder.
Look, as my readers know, Clear Channel must repay $18 billion in debt in a few short years or face bankruptcy. They generate about a billion in revenue each year. Isn’t going to happen.
What are these people thinking – Clear Channel can’t buy more stations!
Or, can they?
Of course, they can.
More fees, more money for Lee and Bain, the investment bankers who are running the group into the ground currently.
Fees for everyone.
That’s entertainment!
In a more sobering moment, all radio would need at this point is more consolidation. In fact, it needs less.
Radio needs re-regulation – redistribute these hundreds and hundreds of radio properties to people who will definitely not run up $18 billion in debt while cutting local programming and putting talented professional talent, sales execs and managers out of work.
In a way, you could also make an argument that if Clear Channel isn’t careful about what it wishes for, that they may get it. In addition to fathering Repeater Radio, they have absolutely no clue how to interface with the new media competitors who they are comparing themselves with in the digital space.
Putting streaming radio stations on the Internet hasn’t done it audience-wise or financially. And beyond that, there is nothing digital that Clear Channel (or for that matter any other consolidator) could call a growth component.
Clear Channel doesn’t even budget even 3% of its annual operating expenses for the new media arena in which it claims it wants to operate.
Just more stations.
More cost cutting opportunities.
More monopoly.
Some people have a hard time understanding how investment bankers could want to get bigger when they are so upside down with debt from what they presently own.
Don’t confuse consolidation for radio broadcasting – you know, serving listeners and advertisers.
Leveraging money is their game.
When you run out of things to buy, you create more thus Clear Channel's present plea to expand ownership limits for radio stations.
I don’t know whether Clear Channel will succeed or fail in their attempt. And I have no idea whether they will even get some accommodations from the FCC. I suspect not, but in another day and in another political arena, Mel Karmazin did.
What I do know is that smaller operators and some medium size groups are beginning to separate from market leader Clear Channel in how they run their stations these days.
Once they copied the leader. Now, they seem to be looking (even if they are not investing) in new media as an equal and separate tandem business for the terrestrial stations they own.
They are rehiring morning personalities for their terrestrial stations. Taking another look at how to regain a local edge.
This is good. Very good.
Clear Channel’s intentions.
Bad.
Very bad.
Except for them. But isn't that what consolidation turned out to be.
Monopoly.
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Jazz has never been big on child prodigies. Unlike classical music, there have been very few bona-fide child prodigies in the music, or at least ones who made a genuine impact. Classical music has had its fair share of them, and several have successfully made the transition into adult performers of note. Probably the most famous of these (in the modern era – there was also Mozart of course), was Yehudi Menuhin, but there have been others such as Midori and Evgeny Kissen. The phenomenon of the child prodigy seems to be particularly prevalent in classical music – go onto Youtube today and you will see any amount of startlingly young children playing at a suitably startling technical level.
Child prodigies have had much less success in jazz and improvised music, both in terms of numbers of prodigies who appeared in the music and in relation to the ultimate long term careers of these prodigies. The most successful one of course was Tony Williams, whose extraordinary playing at the age of 14 with Jackie Mclean startled the jazz world and prompted no less than Miles Davis to lure him away from McLean’s band in 1963. Williams, along with Elvin Jones, became the most influential modern jazz drummer since Max Roach and strong echoes of his playing can be heard in the playing of most jazz drummers today. He went on to be a dominant force on the jazz scene till his death at the tragically early age of 50. Williams aside, I can think of no other child prodigy in jazz who continued his career into adulthood with the same kind of effect that Williams had, or that Menuhin etc. had in the classical world. I do remember teaching at the Banff Centre in Canada in 2002 and coming across an extraordinarily gifted 14 year old pianist called Aaron Parks who has of course gone on to great things in adulthood. But again he’s an exception.
It’s interesting to consider why jazz doesn’t seem to attract, or nurture prodigies in the way that classical music does, and has for over a hundred years. After all, why shouldn’t kids be able to negotiate the changes of a blues or Rhythm Changes when they can negotiate the much stiffer technical challenges of Brahms and Beethoven? My own feeling is that the demands of good jazz improvisation require not only a good technique and knowledge of harmony, but also a broad range of other skills, many of which depend on the maturity and empathy of the player. And maturity and empathy are not usually associated with 10 year olds.
Playing classical music, one can be guided and directed by a good and sympathetic teacher. The goals are a lot clearer – play the score correctly and interpret the notes in order to play the music the way the composer wanted it played. Playing improvised music in a group setting, on the other hand, is not just about one’s own playing, but also demands an ability to hear where one is in relation to everyone else, to respond to everyone else, and to allow one’s own path to be influenced by everyone else in the band, in real time. It’s an extraordinarily difficult task to be able to juggle the subjective and objective like this. And no matter how gifted one may be musically, to have the maturity and empathy to be able to bring off this particular balancing act is usually beyond even the most gifted youngster.
This post was prompted by my seeing two very gifted young musicians recently – the Israeli pianist Gadi Lehavi (14) and the Slovakian guitarist, now living in Ireland, Andreas Verady (13). Both are extraordinarily talented and have a genuine feel for the music – their ability to be able to process information is beyond what one could expect at their age. Lehavi in particular is almost scary in this respect. I watched him play ‘All the Things’ at a jam session in Den Haag recently, and I couldn’t get over the note choices he made, the harmonic ingenuity of his lines and his ability to turn on a dime when an alternative idea was suggested to him by something played in the rhythm section. How can someone so young amass such information, both technically and aesthetically at such an age!? Andreas is also very gifted, if more conventional in terms of his lines and note choices. I played with him at a workshop last year and was struck by his ability to get into the music once he picks the instrument up.
Of course the problem that always surrounds child prodigies is how to nurture their gifts and prevent them from becoming part of a kind of freak show. Audiences love watching children perform beyond the norm for kids of their age, and getting people to come and pay money to gawp at their abilities is like shooting fish in a barrel for promoters. The danger for these kids is that they’re paraded around the circuit and used as a promotional tool by festivals and promoters, and sometimes by the musicians who are performing with them. What these kids need is a nurturing musical environment where they can be given the support required to develop their extraordinary gifts. What they DON’T need is to be sold as a kind of freak, paraded around the circuit endlessly until they become too old to be of any interest to the rubes, and instead of spending all the time they should have spent developing their musicality they’ve worn themselves out playing endless gigs. So they end up at 20 years of age, pretty much playing the way they were when they were 14, but now being just one of hundreds of competent 20 year old players. The danger is that instead of having a long-lasting career in which their gifts enrich the whole scene, they become washed up in their early 20s.
So they need to be looked after very carefully, and it seems to me that Gadi is in good hands – he seems very unaffected by everything, has a real passion for the music and is not being paraded around endlessly by promoters and older musicians. On the other hand I’ve noticed that Andreas is being extensively touted around Ireland in the past 6 months as ‘Jazz Guitar Prodigy’ by festivals, promoters and older musicians. It has a bad feeling about it.
Lets hope that Gadi and Andreas make it beyond the realms of novelty, beyond the vested interests of those who love an opportunity to exploit novelty, and take their extraordinary gifts into their adulthood intact. In the meantime, let’s enjoy their brilliance
Here’s Andreas negotiating Giant Steps at speed
And here’s Gadi, showing extraordinary harmonic richness and improvisational ability on Corea’s ‘Spain’
